A neighbor at the other end of the block has two pristine , beautiful "55" Chevy , two door cars.

Both show quality better than new.

He asked me not to take pictures of them at his garage , but to wait till they are up at the car show next month.

He claims that people can decipher the information posted on the Internet and obtain the lat and longitude.


Or if my phone is lost or stolen , the cars can be located from the picture on the phone.


Is this feasible?

It is my understanding that yes, unfortunately, that is possible and may even be a default setting on your phone.

I don't know if GPS tags on pictures can be turned on/off via some setting or not.

Location is included in the metadata.
My Android asks me if I want to include it when I send a picture.

Yes, geotags being included in the metadata for cell phone pics is definitely a thing.

But it's a setting that can be turned off on your smartphone.

I have the "Location Tags" turned off on my phone. If I hadn't done this the lat/long data would be attached to every picture I took ... and posted. Surprised a buddy who didn't know about this when he sent a vacation picture to me. I responded with a satellite image of the exact spot where he took the picture. He now has his location tags turned off.

Yes. Unless "metadata" is scrubbed from photographs, they can be used to locate the scene of the photo.

Police love this, and it has solved many a crime.

Yes and no.

As mentioned, the data is attached to the photo unless steps are taken to prevent it or remove it.

quote:

Or if my phone is lost or stolen , the cars can be located from the picture on the phone.

I can see that.

quote:

He claims that people can decipher the information posted on the Internet and obtain the lat and longitude.

I can't see that. If they could, to what degree of precision? It would have to be within about half a second of a degree to do any good, unless there are visual cues (e.g., parked in front of a house) in the surroundings.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Yes, geotags being included in the metadata for cell phone pics is definitely a thing.

But it's a setting that can be turned off on your smartphone.

Yup! Turn that thing off.

On an iphone 12 where do I find this setting ? Can't find it in the camera setting.

Settings
Privacy and security
Location services
Camera-select “never”

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Settings
Privacy and security
Location services
Camera-select “never”

Just did it, thank you friend.

People locate random locations based only on photographs on Youtube for entertainment, not only public businesses but scenic views or houses. I don't know how successful they'd be with just the front of a garage to work with, but I'd assume the worst and not take the photos.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Yes, geotags being included in the metadata for cell phone pics is definitely a thing.

But it's a setting that can be turned off on your smartphone.

Yup - Metadata is a thing.

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Yes, geotags being included in the metadata for cell phone pics is definitely a thing.

But it's a setting that can be turned off on your smartphone.

yes sir. The man in the OP knows his shit. I turned that shit off from the rip and turned off the “live” setting as well. That encoding will tell you the damn street address.

I had no idea about this. I set camera at NEVER. What about all those others???
A couple make sense to be on. Compass, Maps,
But what do I know?

I have location services set to “never” for most apps that I can’t think of a reason I would need them to know my location. Those apps that I think do need my location to work (find my, Gas Buddy, weather, etc), I have set to “while using”.

There’s a few apps on my list I don’t recognize. I guess Apple added them during the last update.

With my Iphone I email the pics to myself and then edit the photo to resize them to a size that will display well on a computer monitor. Then I save the file to a JPG format using Micrografix Picture Publisher. Note Picture Publisher is old enough that it will not write any metadata into an Image file. As a result what I post online is completely scrubbed of metadata.

And be aware that same data is included on images taken with modern digital cameras such as Nikon, Canon, etc. Depending on settings, it may be sent to the cloud but it can be turned off. Sometimes things that are supposed to make life easier turn around and bite us in the butt!

And after you do an update check your phone settings because they are often changed to defaults.

quote:

Originally posted by Genorogers:

quote:

Originally posted by arfmel:
Settings
Privacy and security
Location services
Camera-select “never”

Just did it, thank you friend.

+1